Celestial​ Cave of the Trois­ Frères

Palethnologie

“Chantal Jègues-Wolkiewiez … has proposed that the [Lascaux] cave paintings record the constellations of a prehistoric version of the zodiac which also included solstice points and major stars”.

Antiquity, 2006

Since 1999, a research project called Les occupations paléolithiques de la vallée de l'Erve, directed by Jean-Laurent Monnier, is organized by the UMR 6566-CReAAH du CNRS, University of Rennes-1, to perform archaeological studies in the Erve valley, with special regard to cave art. There are now new archaeological researches led by Stéphan Hinguant which give us at last a reliable stratigraphic context and engravings sandstones for the upper palaeolithic period in the valley. Today, a new decorated cave has been discovered in Mayenne: the Margot Cave. This is the first decorated cave identified in Western France since 1967. Up to now, there are 101 representations known, including 7 horses, 8 woolly rhinoceroses and 5 birds. We attribute the positive and negative hands and the paintings to the Gravettian period, the engravings to the Solutrean and Magdalenian period.

A century after Altamira and half a century after Lascaux, Chauvet cave, discovered in 1994, revealed itself to be a spectacular new example of the monumental art produced in Europe by modern humans at the end of the Palaeolithic. Through the richness and excellent conservation of its decoration (425 painted or engraved figures), in an underground network that was frequented both by humans and cave bears, this was an exceptional addition to our knowledge of parietal art. Eighteen years after its discovery, which was marked by numerous debates about its age, it is important to undertake an objective re-examination of this decorated cave's chronological position, and of its exact place in the world of Palaeolithic creative thought. Its coherence with what is already known and well dated does not justify the status of unique phenomenon which some had thought possible to attribute to it. All the archaeological data examined, all the comparative examinations, deny the Aurignacian dating (32 000 BP) assigned to it. The first drawings clearly date back to the Gravettian (around 26 000 BP) and the last, which have some affinities with Lascaux, cannot predate the early Magdalenian. Therefore, like most of the other great sanctuaries of parietal art in France and Spain, Chauvet does not date to a single period, as has been claimed, but its creation spanned many millennia. The AMS isotopic dates which supposedly confer on it a strange antiquity are incorrect, and we put forward a scientific solution that can explain this error.

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2021

The Mas d'Azil cave is a major site for the study of European prehistory, and the evolution of the discipline itself, especially regarding our understanding of the late Upper Paleolithic. In particular, its mobiliary art is one of the richest and the most beautiful known in a Magdalenian context. Lesser known however, is its rock art. Few publications are devoted to these works of prehistoric art, and despite several field work campaigns we still lack a general synthesized study of them at the scale of the entire cave system. A survey of the Mas d'Azil cave system is currently underway, and the aim of this project is to map the archaeological and geoarchaeological organization of the site. Obtaining a reliable topography of the cave, an endeavor begun in the 1980s but never finished, is essential to resituating the archaeological deposits relative to the various natural processes and formations having affected and conditioned their deposition and conservation, as well as the different historical phases of exploitation of the cave. Using this survey approach, we already have a clearer picture of the repartition of Magdalenian areas and circulation spaces of the right bank. Thus, if the residential areas are located on the upper parts of the cave (La Rotonde, Galerie Des Silex), that benefit from more stable and mild temperatures, the lower parts (Salle Piette, Galerie Rouzaud) do not appear to have been residential areas. Our approach also shows that the current entrance of the "Galerie Breuil", which is located at the end of one of the lower rooms and is the main decorated part of the cave, was likely unknown to the Magdalenians. They could only have entered the Galerie Breuil via a smaller hidden corridor that was blocked after the Magdalenian occupation, as the growth of the speleothem obstructing this passage dates to 13 000 y BP. The clear difficulty encountered by Magdalenian occupants as they attempted to access this gallery may have contributed to a symbolic separation between residential and symbolic, and therefore decorated, spaces, where access to the latter may have been actively limited and/or controlled.

Despite the physical condition of the depiction, and the paucity of historically documented gesture signs, the translation may be of use to other researchers

3D technologies are now widely applied in the study of decorated caves and rockshelters because they provide unique volumetric representations of the art. In the cave of Marsoulas (Haute-Garonne, France), which has engravings and paintings which date to approximately 17,000 BP, 3D modeling and other image processing techniques have been combined into an analytical system of documentation that addresses the unique challenges and questions that this site presents to researchers. 3D modeling is used as a new tool for producing easily understandable graphic renderings of the cave walls (essential for interpretation), while also creating a publically accessible reconstruction of the cave art and its environment.

The objectives of the course is to equip one with the knowledge of the various categories of property rights in land and to know a bit about construction of forms and other documents used in the registration system.

InDret, 2024

International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 2024

The current study considers the effects of the Chinese low arousal emotion Foreign Language Peace of Mind (FLPOM) and the medium-to-high arousal emotion of Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) on the performance of 400 Chinese and 502 Moroccan English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. The database consists of two merged datasets collected with the same instruments from learners with comparable profiles for English. The data on Chinese EFL learners was collected and used in Zhou et al. (Applied Linguistics Review, 2023a) while the data on Moroccan EFL learners was used in Dewaele and Meftah (Journal of the European Second Language Association, 2023); Dewaele et al. (Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 2023a). The comparison revealed that all students reported higher levels of FLE than FLPOM. Moroccan students scored significantly higher on FLPOM and FLE than their Chinese peers. They also had significantly higher scores on the FLE Personal dimension. Finally, FLPOM was more strongly associated with performance than FLE among the Moroccan EFL learners, confirming the pattern in Zhou et al. (Applied Linguistics Review, 2023a). FLPOM did explain slightly more variance in the performance of Chinese EFL learners. Pedagogical implications are presented.